


Monster Sentai Horroranger

by nitpickbrony



Category: Super Sentai Series
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitpickbrony/pseuds/nitpickbrony
Summary: On the night of Halloween, the entire world went nuts, the Monster's Moon lighting up a midnight sky all around the globe. 5 young people, descendents of famous, horrible beasts are the only hope the world has to defeat the villainous Midnight Cabal before next Halloween and the awakening of their god: The Cloaked Nightmare.





	1. Nightmare 1: Golden Coffins

My life used to be perfect. I was on my way to changing the world, showing everyone around me what I was made of and leaving my mark on history. My name is Roy Harker, and my great-something grandparents killed a vampire one time. I’m not sure why anyone would care, what really matters is how they built their business. Elevating our family name out of the mire and making us into the kind of people who matter. I was on my way towards completing the next step of showing the entire world how brilliant I am.  
And then the entire world went insane.  
I don’t remember where I’ve been, I don’t even know where I am now. All I can hear is shouting and all I can focus on is the fire flickering down below in the street, to my tired eyes it makes all of London look like a bonfire. When I look up, I can still see it, all the hoping that it had been a bad dream vanishing and leaving only a tightness in my chest.  
The full moon, the twinkling star lit sky. It would be a beautiful sight except for two things. It’s 4PM and the moon is blood red with a black slit in it making it look like a gigantic lizard’s eye. Everyone is panicking and I can’t even remember where I was.  
I place my hand to my forehead as I come to, recoiling at the chill I feel from my own palm, looking at it closely. Blue veins and clammy, greying skin tipped with five beastly yellow nails.  
I quickly stand in shock and nearly teeter off the edge of the massive building i must have passed out on, my hand reaching out beside me to grip tightly against the black metal spire to my back. The tolling of the clock tells me exactly where I am.  
I’m standing on top of Big Ben while the entire city burns.  
“Hold steady, I’m not sure even a Dhampir could survive a fall from here.” A calm, gravely voice spoke from further behind me. I turned, nearly losing hold of the iron spike, my fingers curling into it, making the old metal squeal as it bends.  
The old man before me is dressed in a dark black trench coat that goes down to his ankles with a wide brimmed hat, thick boots and wild grey hair that hides his face. He’s carrying an old, rusty spade. I can’t see a thing past his hair, collar and hat but he seems to be looking at me. Not many other he could be looking at on the top of Big Ben.  
“Who the hell are you?!” I bark, the tightness in my chest turning into anger toward this dirty stranger talking like he knows me. “Why did you bring me up here?! What did you do to me?!” I shouted, demanding my rightful answers.  
He considered me for a moment, tilting his head and walking towards me, grabbing me by the chin and holding a mirror in my face after imbedding the spade in the roof below our feet.  
“What the hell is this supposed to tell me?! It’s a blank...mirror…” I say, trying to ignore the revulsion as his gloved hands touch my carefully tended skin. I pulled back from him violently, grabbing the mirror from his hands, looking into it, making positively sure that it should be reflecting my noble features back into it. There’s nothing, just blank, shimmering glass staring back.  
“Your ancestor, Mina Harker was bitten by Count Dracula many decades before you were born.” he said, snatching the mirror from my grasp and replacing it in his coat. “She was ultimately saved from undeath but his fanged kiss left a taint in your bloodline. Awakened by the Monster’s Moon.” he said, pointing straight up at the frightening body. “You are now a Dhampir, only partially vampiric-” He spoke, cut off as I grabbed him by the lapels, pulling him close, for the first time feeling fangs scrape against my trembling lips.  
“Shut up, shut up! I know the story of Dracula, I’ve been told it again and again since I was young so don’t talk down to me, you pissant!” I shook him, the man seemingly of solid composition beneath the coat as he only grabbed my wrists and pried them away.  
“Perhaps I should show you something. Put things in perspective, you whining welp.” He shoved me, leaving me to stagger back nearly off the clocktower all together until he grabbed me by the collar and leaped from the building into insane freefall.  
I closed my eyes, waiting for the cold chill and numbness of death until I opened my eyes, feeling a horrific shock in my spine as we bounded off the roof of the closest building, one after the other, the man’s feet barely touching the ground between jumps. We landed on a building near a park, people running in every direction, shouting about the end times and the coming of god’s wrath. He pointed with a single gloved finger towards a mob coming out of the cover of the trees.  
Leading the charge was a gang of plain, white mannequin looking creatures, covered head to toe in haphazard jigsaw scars leaking a tar-like, deep maroon blood, each of them leaping about brandishing a large hunting knife. The smell of the blood hit me like a truck, even from so far away, smelling like a mixture of sewage and rubbish left out in the sun. I covered my face with the back of my hand, protecting my senses, my wrist roughly moved by the faceless stranger, directing my attention to the leader of the pack.  
It was a huge man, seven foot tall at least with wild, smoking hair and a mask stitched together from leather hide. His body was covered in a darkly stained apron and coveralls, wide butchers gloves and rain boots. In the center of his chest and stomach was a glowing hot chainsaw’s blade, spinning in the middle of his torso like it was a part of him.  
The unruly gang ran after the crowd of fleeing people, a woman in heels tripping and falling onto her face, rolling over and scooting back in terror as the creature approached, signalling for the mannequins to go around her, a gnarled grin coming from between the folds of his leather mask.  
“You have to do something!” I cried, holding onto his dirty coat, my legs shaking. “He’s going to kill that woman!” I pounded on his shoulder, trying to get him to heed me.  
“I don’t have the power to stop him.” he said, holding out to me a strange armband and a metal plate shaped like a hexagonal tombstone with a cross carved on one side and a blank, shiny surface on the other. “But you may. This is your Horror Changer, and that is a Gravestone. Insert it into the changer cross side up and flip it over, it should do the rest.” he said, grabbing me by the back of the shirt and shoving me over the side. To my eternal surprise I landed on my feet from 3 stories up without breaking an ankle.  
My hands shook as I fumbled with the metal, placing it into the wristband as I strapped it onto my arm. I flicked it over with the nailed on two fingers and felt a surge of energy, like magma in my veins.  
“Rise UP! Dracula!” Said a cackling voice coming from the device, like a shout from the grave. All my muscles tensed as I was wreathed in a halo of black smoke, feeling something form over me like flexible metal.  
The smoke faded and I stood before the beast and the helpless damsel, both of them staring at me, mouth agape as my body moved on it’s own, my lips speaking words I wasn’t thinking.  
“Terror in the darkest night! Dracula! Red!” I bellowed, the words feeling good in my mouth. I looked down, red gloves leading up to black sleeves, a red spandex-like bodysuit with a black tombstone chest marking and red cross inside it. Ending in a belt with a jagged H buckle and matching pants and boots. The monster didn’t gape long, laughing at me with a deep voice like cracking embers.  
“A Gravestone! Perfect! Now I can slaughter these helpless piggies and bring it back as well. Now all I need is to be rid of the pesky arm wearing it!” He snarled, his hand lighting aflame and flinging burning blades at me.  
I leaped, my head dizzying as the ground seemed to shrink beneath me, my leap carrying me up to the roof of the house where the stranger still stood, watching. A glint of something appeared in his hand and he tossed it to me. I just barely managed to catch the thing as I fell, landing heels first to the beast’s shoulders. I bounced off of him, rolling to my feet a few yards away before looking into my palm, finding a second Gravestone had been what he had tossed.  
The monster screamed in rage and the bloody doll minions turning back, beginning to circle around me, waiting for an opening to pounce. I gulped hard, removing the first Gravestone form the changer and, without anything to lose, slotting in and flipping over the new one.  
“Chiller! DracBlade!” The device’s voice shouted and out of another haze of blackness formed a massive two handed, wide bladed sword that dropped into my palms. I held it tight, trying to ignore the trembling in my digits as I swing wildly with both hands. I felt the cold metal of the sword bite into the “flesh” of the dolls, causing their joints to come loose, their bloody bodies rattling to the ground. I blinked looking down at it and grinning beneath my helmet, getting in a low stance and charging forward, wading into the mob of at least 3 dozen mooks and cutting them to pieces. That is until the monster at the head charged into me like a subway train.  
“EEEEENOUGH!” He shouted like a bellowing bull, slamming me into a wall, holding my body against the burning saw as it spun, tearing against the suit like molten arrowheads. The material held, miraculously and I was able to get my feet against his stomach and shove with all my might, sending him flying across the courtyard into a bench, the smoldering wreckage of the seat tangled against him as he landed.  
One of the grunts was stalking up on the woman from behind, her eyes transfixed on the battle too much to have any good sense and run. I took the brief reprieve from the monster to charge toward her swinging just soon enough to stop the hunting knife from splitting open her braincase, with only the very tip of the blade, scraping her forehead, a single pearl of blood drooling down.  
In an instant I felt as if I had never eaten an ounce of food in my life, the hunger shaking outwards from my core, leaving me paralyzed as I heard a new voice call out, the monster once again on his feet, charging toward me with fiery fists poised to crush my skull.  
“Catch!” A smaller, young voice said. With the last of my will I held my hand out, catching a third Gravestone in my hand, looking over to the small, freckle cheeked, bright eyed hunchback that had thrown it. I strained against the hunger to insert and flip the plate.  
“Bury! DracSlash!” I lashed out with my right hand holding the blade toward the monster, hoping against hope I was assuming correctly. The blade entered my vision just as it cut into the beast, the blade glowing with bright crimson energy, bisecting the beast in a single stroke, leaving him fizzling away into foul goo and plumes of charcoal smoke.  
I stood there, stunned for a long moment as the last of the murderous dolls crumbled to parts. Walking away and leaving the common woman to pick herself up.  
I leaped up to the roof where the stranger stood, the cute hunchback dwarf standing beside him.  
“Now...I would like some answers.” I said, removing the Gravestone from the Changer, after a few second the armor vanishing in a smokey puff. The stranger cleared his throat.  
“I am Gravekeeper. This is my assistant Yegor. That…” he said, gesturing up. “Is the Monster’s Moon, the creation of a failed ritual of a group known as the Midnight Cabal. They failed at resurrecting their evil god of nightmares after Yegor defected from them and stole away the Gravestones. Now, if all goes well they will have to wait until the next Halloween to try again, if they can take the stones from our dead bodies.” He laid out, holding up a jingling bag of the Gravestones.  
“So now, they have to send out their nasty Reel Beasts and Bloodies in an attempt to drum up enough fear and misery to charge the Gravestones for the next ritual.” The hunchback added.  
“Well then why not give them all to me now? Give me as many weapons as I might need-” He cut me off with a palm against my chest as I reached out for the bag.  
“Even if you are the son of the greatest vampire and greatest vampire hunters to ever live, one soldier cannot win any war. Now come, we must find the others before the sun rises again.” He turned, as if expecting me to follow, looking over his shoulder when I did not. “Something wrong?”  
“Yes something is wrong! Why should I fight on your looney crusade!?” I prodded, pointing an accusing finger toward the two.  
“Lots of reasons. If you don’t, all the people in the world will die and if we collect all the Gravestones the got scattered when the ritual failed, we could use their power to turn you normal again.” The dwarf said with a giggle. I growled, narrowing my eyes at the imp, walking after the two reluctantly.  
I felt like dirt was closing over my head, like being buried alive.  
If nothing else, ti was going to be a long night.  
\---  
The cavernous walls of the black stone caves echoed with the sounds of enraged bellowing and thrown objects shattering against them.  
In the central chamber of the caves set a large, dark meeting room with 5 red and gold thrones positioned in a semicircle around a 6th, hidden in black fog. Four of the chairs were occupied, their occupants hidden in shadow, the last was empty, its owner was dressed in a raggy camping jacket, jeans and hiking boots with a cracked mask fuzed to his grey, zombie-like skin. A single glowing purple eye peered out from it, the other sewn shut. He had finished his tantrum, huffing over the remains of a shattered ornate table at his feet.  
“Now, Now, calm down dear Slasher~” One of the voices, an elegance female voice consoled from the shadows. “You can’t win all the time~” She cooed.  
“Be quiet! The ritual has not only alerted the humans to our plans it’s also left Nightmare’s body comatose! My LeatherBlaze was destroyed!” He huffed and growled, sitting heavily in his throne, his blade, a haphazardly forged sword made of bits of rusty metal, leaning against one side.  
“Quite right, she is, Slasher. New Reel Beasts can always be made from the scales of Nightmare.” A posh, male voice replied.  
“Hehehehehe, yea, and we get the fun of messing with the humans some more!” A cackling female voice intoned, the laugh echoing out against the walls of the hidden caves, leaving the terrible villains to plot.


	2. Nightmare 2: Frozen Veins

The distant sound of screams outside my window roused my attention from the book that seemed dwarfed in my giant hands. I stood, hearing my muscles creak and bones click as I turned out to face the small rectangular basement window that was the only source of light into my secluded space.  
Only hours before it had been a cold, calm Swiss afternoon, the sun shining down on cold autumn hair. Some time ago the sky had turned dark and the moon has been transformed into aa crimson, reptilian eye that stared down at the people of the world, causing panic and hysteria wherever it went.  
I turned to face the door of the basement, craning my head upward as it opened a crack, electric light streaming against the wall as my mother’s voice called down to me, sick with worry and trembling.  
“Loris? Loris, please, we can’t stay here. Something is terribly, terribly wrong…” She said clutching her coat tighter to her body as I walked up the stairs toward the door, making the wooden steps groan in protest beneath my weight.  
“You are right. You and dad should go somewhere safe. It’s not safe for people with all this panic.” I replied, placing one massive hand on the door and forcing it closed despite her attempts to push against me.  
“Please, Loris! You can’t stay here! You’re still our son!” I turned, feeling my messy hair scrape over the rags I was wearing, I made my way down the rest of the stairs and settled back into my seat, turning off the desk lamp that had illuminated my attempts to read.  
“Your son, mother, died a year ago. The satanic science that created me in his place will not return your son to you.” I firmly stated, closing the book of my ancestor’s notes, the same notes my parents had used to revive their deceased son into this stitched up, clammy skinned facade.  
I heard the front door open upstairs, at least two sets of footprints entering our secluded home, my father’s muffled voice confronting them, through I heard the intruders’ voices more clearly than his.  
“Are you sure this is where we will find our next soldier, Gravekeeper? This house seems rather pedestrian.” Said a voice in a posh English accent, making no attempt to respond to my father’s protests in German.  
“This is where the Gravestone calls us, Roy. It’s bearer is somewhere within this place.” he said, before actually responding to my parents in a deep, fluent Swiss German that came unexpected of a foreigner.  
“Mr and Mrs Frankenstein, I am called Gravekeeper. This is Roy Harker. We have urgent business to discuss with your son, Loris.” He asked of them, followed by a long moment of uneasy silence and the pattering of feet back toward the basement door.  
Panic overtook me in that moment and I lunged toward the shadowy corners of the musty basement room, throwing a tattered blanket over myself to hide my ugly, unnatural visage as the door creaked open, light streaming down into my sanctum.  
Only a moment later did the footstep approach my hiding place, my mother and father crouching beside me even as I hid, slowly removing the blanket from over my head, letting me get my first good look at our visitors.  
There were three of them, a tall man dressed in a shaggy coat with wild hair and a wide hat, his hands wrapped around a rusty spade, his features hidden from view. The second was small, barely the size of a child, a hunchback with unkempt red hair and plump, freckled features who hung close to his tall, dirty companion. The third simply screamed elegance and high class, dressed in a button up shirt and slacks with well groomed brown hair, pale skin and piercing red eyes.  
I turned, raising my hands to hide my face, pale grey skin cut and stitched in random places around joints and long, wavy black hair I hadn’t cut in a year hanging down past my shoulders, inhuman yellow eyes shut tight in terror.  
“No, no! Don’t look at me! Don’t let anyone see!” I screamed in my deep, bassy voice, far beyond the gentle, intellectual tone I had before my accident, sounding instead like a large ape or the rumblings of some other massive beast.  
“Loris Frankenstein, please. We must speak with you, these are matters of the survival of the entire world and all those who inhabit it.” The tall stranger spoke, his voice matching the one who called himself Gravekeeper.  
My parents retreated behind the visitors as I sighed and turned to face them, sitting with my back against the wall, knees bent up toward my chest, arms placed against them.  
“I regret to inform you, sir but Loris Frankenstein passed this past January. Crushed beneath a tree toppled by a gust of blizzard winds as he returned home from school. What you see before you is the product of my ancestors notes on resurrection, simply a pale shell of the man made in his image.” I explained, the well dressed follower, I guessed he must have been Roy Harker, rolling his eyes at my speechifying.  
“Loris, the loss of your body is no obstacle to being who you are. It is what is within you that matters most to our cause-” The Gravekeeper attempted to rason, before a sharp cackling broke the air, followed by the rumbling of many footsteps outside.  
“Leave him Gravekeeper, it appears I will have to deal with this new beast on my own.” Roy said, pulling up his sleeve to reveal a strange device on his wrist, removing a gravestone shaped metal plate from the pocket of his slacks, charging up the stairs, followed closely by the diminutive hunchback and his spade wielding mentor.  
I walked up to the window, hearing a shouting voice as I observed the monsters that had come to our doorstep, a group of dozens of blood dripping mannequins and a leading beast, a creature of two bodies, one male, the other female, dressed in tattered clothing with black marks spread over their faces with handprints, each of it's four arms holding a fire poker with the female half leading, the male half’s legs seeming to almost hang in the air, shriveled and atrophied from lack of use.  
Roy Harker vanished in a burst of black soot and smoke, appearing instead as a bright red warrior dressed in the motif of a vampire, with a bat shaped visor and tombstone and cross marking on his chest and stomach, wading into the crowd of footsoldiers, cutting them down with a massive sword, sending many of them flying with each strike.  
The lead monster did not sit idly by as it’s soldiers were cut down, diving toward Roy with all four of it's fire pokers laying into him, stabbing and bludgeoning, sending him down to the dirt hard, Roy only barely managing to fight back to his feet, parrying barely half of the strikes with his blade.  
I looked to my parents to either side of me, their faces masks of worry and fear. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trudging up the stairs and opening the door to our cottage just as the monster had pinned Roy to a tree. I picked up a boulder that had sat in our front yard since before I could remember and lifted it to my shoulder, hurling it hard to it caught the beast on it's twin heads, sending it bouncing and spinning against the grassy land.  
I turned to Gravekeeper and without speaking he produced another wrist mounted device and three Gravestones. I nodded to him, taking them and inserting the first into the device as I strapped it on, flipping it over with one finger and feeling the energy course through me, reminding me of that tragic night where I was resurrected by the lightning.  
“Rise UP! Frankenstein!” The shrill voice of the device intoned, the armor, similar to Roy’s except in green, appeared around me in a puff of smoke, the smoke cloud rumbling with thunder and lightning as it disappeared around me.  
“Terror in the thunderclouds! Frankenstein! Green!” I shouted before lowering my broad shoulder and charging the monster before it had a chance to recover from the boulder struck against its heads, slamming into it's chest and feeling the numb pressure of it's fire pokers glancing off my dense skin.  
I slammed with it right into the trunk of a dense tree, slamming my fists over it's heads, getting shoved back by four hard feet, skidding backwards and falling back against another tree, removing the gravestone and replacing it with the second.  
“Chiller! FrankenHammer!” The voice shouted out as a massive green and silver warhammer appeared in my hands.  
I pressed my advantage, charging forward, making the ground rumble beneath my feet, slamming the hammer down on the creature as it held up the fire pokers, shattering the iron implements and sending shards in every direction, pummeling the creature until I found an opening to slot in the third and final gravestone.  
“Bury! FrankenSlam!” The device shouted as the hammer was struck by a stray bolt of lightning as I raised it high, slamming it downward hard and crushing the creature beneath its weight, causing it to crumble to dust and smoke.  
I dropped the hammer, removing the gravestone and stepping up to Roy, looking down at him as he too removed the stone, both our armors vanishing after a moment.  
“What caused your change of heart?” he said, raising a skeptical brow as Gravekeeper and his assistant as well as my parents walked up to us, my parents both hugging me tightly.  
“Perhaps something of my self worth can be recovered in helping others. Besides, it wouldn’t be right of me to simply stand by and watch you die.” I said, clasping my hand to Roy’s shoulder. He attempted to brush it off but only managed to remove it with two hands.  
“Don’t be stupid, i could’ve destroyed that beast easily with my own two hands and my blade.” He objected, Gravekeeper shaking his head as I gave my parents a hug goodbye.  
“Of course you could have, Roy, of course.” Gravekeeper said, humoring the posh red hero, both of us chuckling as we went off to our next adventure.


	3. Nightmare 3: Dust and Sand

The dark is always loud and the insides of this cavernous tomb never change. I get up every morning and take my time walking around the outside of the room I’ve chosen to sleep, then I follow the left wall out into the hall, circle the next room down the hall, follow the hall, circle the rooms, try to keep myself sane while having lost track of time at least a thousand years ago, or two days, or an hour. The only thing I know is when the voices start.  
“You are an unclean child.” Says the first voice, the shimmering purple outline of the long dead priest the only light I ever get aside from the stray lashes of sunlight coming in from above the sand over the single small hole in the ceiling of the third room in the hall. I turn to face him, first checking my arms and legs in the dim light to make sure I hadn't cut myself on anything in the 24 hours since the last time this specter had come to haunt me.  
“I am...was...only born.” I try to choke out the words without them sounding stilted, trying to untangle them in my head, learning how to talk from the being who was trying to eternally torment me for being the adulterous daughter of some priest and Egyptian princess wasn’t exactly the best way to gain a positive vocabulary.  
“You are a punishment on the greatest house of all Egypt. Your punishment is an eternity of darkness and solitude, a reminder that you were not meant to be.” He said, standing over me with his sleeves tucked into one another, a look of anger and sly confidence crossing his lips. Not many men could be said to enjoy the duty of tormenting a young girl for a thousand years but he found a way to love it.  
“I am not...broken. I am...alive and...h-human.” I responded, standing up in his face. These conversations always went the same way, I was convinced a long time ago that this image wasn’t a living being, just some spell or other curse that was left here in the image of a human being without actually being connected to a true person.  
The sound that shook the tombs around us in that moment was something completely new. New voices, some kind of rumbling, the sounds of footsteps and screaming in a crescendo I had never heard before. I left the image and turned to the room with the hole in the floor, the one that was left there to remind me just how close I was to the surface but could never climb up.  
For the first time in my life I saw something that wasn’t this god forsaken tomb when something’s foot crashed through the pane of glass hidden beneath the sand above, a pale, off white foot that clicked and clattered when it attempted to move before going limp with the sound of a crunching above.  
“Stay here, you cursed welp, do not move! The ancient magic will repair the glass soon-” I did not wait to hear the rest of his useless warning. I simply leaped up and grabbed onto the ankle as it was pulled back up into the sand, closing my eyes and mouth as I was pulled with it through the sand by something heavy and ferocious.  
The second my body left the sand it was flung through the air attached to the carcass of whatever’s leg I was holding onto, landing about ten feet away in the pale moonlight of the air. I looked up and around, letting go of the leg of this wooden, human like creation that had been my salvation, my hand now stained with thick, sticky red blood that didn’t smell human.  
There were dozens of the dolls, dancing about with clattering, clicking movement, chasing after a group of people, a caravan in big, rumbling machines that carried them on four spinning, black limbs. Two men were holding back the tide, one of them with pale skin and dark hair, deep crimson eyes and sharp teeth, bouncing from one to the other and slashing them with claws that shone like silver. The other was massive, dwarfing anything I had ever seen and sending the dolls flying with massive swings of his arms and shoulders.  
They both noticed me, lying in the sand, staring all around me in awestruck, mind numbing overload of just this simple scene of the stars and moon above, even if the moon did look like some unholy eye. The larger one stopped fighting, most of the dolls having been destroyed already. He trudged up to me, his weight leaving heavy footfalls in the sand.  
“Are you alright?” He spoke to me, another voice, a third voice. The first third voice I had ever heard in my entire existence that wasn’t me or that ghost’s. I opened my lips to speak, trying to find the words to express everything I was feeling, frantically searching through all the grammar i had been able to learn from the hauntings.  
“I am...alive…” I choked out, reaching up to touch his face, my blue tinted, deep looking skin clung to my bones much closer than his, wrappings of the dead circling around my arms and legs from my wrists and ankles to my shoulders and thighs, even around my throat. The boy with dark hair and fangs walked up to us.  
“Who is she? She wasn't with the Desert Tour.” He spoke in a fourth voice, obviously. This one more...different. Not like the large boy’s, he reminded me of the way royals spoke, from what little I knew of the civilization that had spawned me.  
“She, Roy, is why we have made our way to Memphis, or at least to what remains.” A man said from behind me, looking back I saw his shaggy hair and hidden eyes. “This is Princess Seneb of Egypt. Cast into the dark on the day of her birth as the daughter of a priest and a princess whose love could never be.” He placed a hand upon my shoulder, looking down at me in a way that settled my insides enough to stand and face the two others fulls, patting down the golden yellow dress I wore, in tatters through it was.  
“Seneb...me….” I said, pointing to myself, trying to get them to understand I wasn’t just some idiot locked away. That I had so much inside me I wanted to say right then if only I was able to learn the words. “I...am...me…” I said, gesturing frantically, a lump forming in my throat as they looked at me in confusion.  
“Hey...hey, slow down. Ok…” The big boy said, placing both his massive hands around mine, he was warm and I stopped, wanting to break down and cry but still too amazed at being outside, sure I was going to wake up at any second right back in the hole the priests had left me in.  
“Gravekeeper...how long was she down there?” The dark haired boy questioned, who must have been Roy, identifying the shaggy haired man as Gravekeeper, who turned his spade over in his hands, like he didn’t want to say the answer out loud.  
“She was buried during the last years of the old kingdom. So, within rounding. She’s been buried all alone for forty-two hundred years.” he said, both boys jaws dropping and looking at me, the big boy pulling me into an embrace and holding tight, talking into my ear.  
“You poor, poor girl.” he said before releasing me, crouching down so our eyes met, mine mesmerized by his deep yellow gaze. “You’re not going back, do you understand me? We’re not putting you back in there. Ever.” He said to me, placing slow emphasis on each word to make sure I could understand. I nodded, embracing him as well, wrapping my hands around his neck.  
“I...thank...you…” I spoke, looking to Roy with wide eyes and he simply gave me a narrow, hard look.  
“Whoever could have done this? I mean, I know who....but...It’s inhuman.” he said, turning back to Gravekeeper. “How long did you know she was here? Why are you only now rescuing her when we need her?” he said in a voice that sounded angry, like he was accusing the shaggy man.  
“I didn’t know until the Cabal’s plan was already in motion. If I had known a second sooner rest assured she would not have been suffering the second after.” he said, walking up to me as I let go of the big boy. “Seneb. This is Roy.” he said, gesturing to the fanged boy. “That is Loris.” The big boy waved in response, moving some of his messy hair from his eyes. “And I am Gravekeeper. This is my assistant Yegor.” He turned, revealing a very small boy, freckled with red hair who waved at me, hopping up to the boys and I and offering some strange containers, Roy and Loris each taking one, so I took one too. They leaned their heads back and sucked on the end of the container, so I mimicked the motion, swallowing like a swallowed spin. What came out of the end of the bottle was cool and delicious and I continued to gulp it down until there was none left.  
Roy and Loris stared at me, Loris offering his bottle to me, which I gulped down without thinking, Roy offering his next which was handled similarly. I gasped for breath as I finished them all, wiping my lips and panting, looking at Yegor and embracing him next.  
“Mummified alive…” Loris said, his hand on his cheek, he face pained and twisted. “Nothing to eat or drink for forty-two hundred years. Kept alive by a curse meant to punish her for existing...I’m gonna be sick…” he said, looking to Roy who simply nodded and growled.  
“The bastards should consider themselves lucky they died so long ago. I’d kill them all in an instant.” Roy said as something began to rise from the sand behind him, like a wraith made out of the dark i had just escaped. My heart sunk and I screamed, shuffling back in that sand and stumbling, falling and pointing.  
“B-back...B-back behind!” I pointed and shouted, but not soon enough to stop the shadow from clamping it's hands down on Roy’s shoulders, watching him sink beneath the sand like is was swallowing him whole until only one hand was left frozen in the air, paralyzed. Loris tried to react but the shadow blinked behind him, laying it's hands on him too, sinking his massive body beneath the dunes. Gravekeeper and Yegor threw me something as they too were sunk beneath, a thing on a strap and three plates of gleaming metal. I stood, shaking and shivering as the beast turned to face me, all alone in the middle of the night.  
It was almost human but with deep purple skin and twinkling white eyes like it had been crafted from the dark, dressed in loose fitting cloth stained with dirt and mud. One of it’s hand was a huge, U shaped claw, like a tool for digging in the earth, it’s skin like cracked, dry stone or mud. It vanished and I leaped clear of it just as it’s hand came down where my shoulders had been. I tightened the thing I had been thrown onto my wrist, slapping one of the plates into it.  
“Rise UP! Mummy!” the voice form it shouted as a cyclone of sand was whipped up around my body, yellow clothing replacing my tattered garments, topped off with a helmet that I saw through to the monster’s reaction, a look of shock and surprise before a wicked grin but he and the doll creatures he summoned were blown back as the cyclone of sand was forced away from me.  
“Terror in the sunswept sand! Mummy! Yellow!” The words flowed out of my naturally, letting my truly hear my own voice for the first time, what I sounded like without the sputtering, the searching for words, the choking of sounds. I looked at my hands and closed them tight. I would not let him put me back in the sands.  
The doll monsters charged and my feet reacted under me, leaping me high into the air to begin kicking and spinning across their mob, sending them shattering to the sand. The monster still blinked around behind me, always trying to force me down into the dune but I was too quick for him to follow, bouncing from one strike to the next often leading him to lay his touch on his own soldiers, sending them down to the dust.   
I fumbled the second plate into the device, removing the first and flipping it over as I had done with the first, simply curious to see what it would do.  
“Chiller! MummyClaws!” the voice said, two clawed gauntlets appearing on my hands, a single long mummy wrapping falling over the back of each of them. I lashed out with them, sending the wrapping to wrap around and crush the dolls even as I slashed and clawed at the ones closest to me.  
The beast teleported behind me while I was in the middle of a kick, unable to move but I screamed out.  
“No! Not back!” As the mummy wrappings shot backwards over my shoulder, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him down in front of me the bandages wrapping his throat and holding him up in front of me, the last of his soldiers gone. I placed the third plate and flipped it over.  
“Bury! MummyCrush!” I placed both the clawed gloves on either side of the beasts, face, the claws digging into him as I pushed down, beginning to hear his head crack beneath my hands, the cracks in his face shining with orange light until finally the energy was too much and he exploded into ash and smoke in front of me.  
I dropped back onto my but, removing the plates as I heard rustling in the sands behind me, turning, ready to place the plate in again until I saw all of my rescuers clawing their way our of the sand, seemingly having been kept there in some kind of stasis under the monster’s power. Roy patted down his slick black coat, sighing to himself.  
“I’m not sure why I even wear decent clothes anymore…” He lamented, Loris running up and hugging me tight, enough to almost begin hurt my back. I laughed, embracing him back, giggling like a fool.  
“I...I...I win.” I said to Loris, beginning to sob in joy into his shoulder as he set me down, turning me to face Gravekeeper.  
“Seneb. The injustice you have suffered is great. And nothing more can be asked of you.” He said, placing his hands on my shoulders, looking down to me. “But these creatures want to hurt people. And we want your help so that no one else has to suffer because of them.” He said, his voice sober and calm.  
“No one...no one suffer? I...I want...Mummy Yellow. I want...you all.” i said, trying to make myself understood as Loris slapped me on the back, laughing and nodding, roy giving my a smirk and a thumbs up.  
“Welcome to the Horroranger, your highness.” Loris said, lifting me up onto his shoulders and carrying me off into this new life I had begun. I had survived. Now it was my turn to thrive.  
\---  
The evil caves were quieter now, two voices ringing off the walls in quiet, through no less insidious conversation.  
“Two monsters. Two separate monsters I sent to destroy them and retrieve the Gravestones and two monsters they dared to defy!” The man speaking, dressed all in black, billowing shadows shaped like the shadow of a well dressed man with a cane, monocle and tophat stalked from one end of the room to another, Jagged Slasher sharpening his blade on some deformed, monstrous beast’s skull.  
“If I remember correctly, Chiller Thriller. This last monster was a team effort between the both of us.” Said a woman, dressed in purple and gold, a dress that was wide and delicately detailed, a dark and grungy porcelain mask covering her features. “Your first monster was so pathetic, but this one? This one was only thwarted because they happened to find that accursed princess. Don’t fret too much, darling. There will be many more chances to take back what is ours.” The woman spoke, placing a black gloved hand on the shoulder of the shadow.   
“Gothic Queen, you would do well not to lay hands on me.” The shadow said, using his cane to smack away her hand. “We must prepare for what our next move must-” He was interrupted by the Queen closing her umbrella and smacking at him with it, her mask suddenly infested with hairline cracks as he only barely managed to parry with his cane.  
“Don’t talk down to me, you miserable fop! I will destroy you and take any little glory you had left when the Nightmare rises again.” She said, her voice much more unsteady, like she was only barely restrained from violence.  
The shadow man lowered his cane until they both stood looking at once another, a voice form the two remaining dark thrones croaking out a heavy, throaty laugh.  
“Perhaps it’s time for someone else to try, Thriller.” The owner of the voice leaned forward, a crocodile snout of serrated, rotting teeth smiling in murderous malice.


	4. Nightmare 4: Wilf Wolf

There are flashes of it every so often, switching between now and only a few hours ago. My head feels like someone stuck in a blender and pureed every thought I have. My mouth tasted like blood and my clothes were shredded. Something nearby smelled rotten and I could hear shouting and see the waving of flashlight beams in the dark.  
I run my fingers through my hair and look up into the sky to see that same eye-moon that’s been hanging over the Arizona desert for hours. It sent a shiver up my spine and a throb through my temples.  
When the moon had changed into the full, blood red...thing that currently sat above my head something inside me had changed, my thoughts were drained away and my mind became violent and aggressive, I doubled over in pain as my bones twisted and cracked into new positions and I was left a howling, screaming mess without any idea of what was going on. My younger sister Elaina tried to reach out to comfort me but I lashed out with claws I hadn’t had before, slashing bloody marks across her face that left her tumbling to the floor. My father was waving a shotgun around and I suddenly found myself unable to understand him. So, under some instinct of wild survival, I ran, I busted through the window, sending shattered glass down over me in a rain of twinkling shards and I pelted out toward the desert trailing dust behind me.  
It could be an hour later, it could have been days, this damn moon came out of nowhere so who’s to say how quickly it would go away, if it ever would. I took a second to lean my shoulder against a tree, trying to catch my breath, hoping to god that this blood in my mouth wasn’t human, at least, i was praying until I felt something drip onto me from the tree and turned my head slightly, stepping back from the bark to find the partly torn in half remains of an antelope had been flung against at least a half a dozen trees before being tossed about one hundred feet away from where I had woken up.  
“Oh shit…” I said, gagging and covering my face as I stumbled back from the carcass, tripping my ankle over a log and tumbling down a dusty bank, looking up to see something standing over me. It was tall, with black ooze running down it’s features and it’s joints softly clacking together on each of it’s stiff, toy-like movements, it held a rusty serrated knife in one hand. It took only a second for dozens more of them to begin pouring out of the trees and I scrambled backwards, pushing my back against the dusty hillside.  
Just as one of the bleeding dolls raised its arm up to stab down at me it was blindsided by a well timed slam of some massive hammer into it’s chest, sending parts of it twirling off into the undergrowth.  
I turned my head to face my rescuer and saw an absolute mammoth of a man standing above me in a green suit with a black and silver coffin emblazoned on his chest who took only a moment to look down and check on me before charging into the fray, followed closely behind by a woman in yellow and a man in red, slashing at the doll men with claw and sword respectively.  
I placed my hands firmly to the floor and pushed myself to my feet. Looking over my shoulder and seeing a ragged man in patchy clothing and a small boy with tousled red hair and a freckled face.  
“Who the hell are you people?!” I shouted to be heard over the sound of the battle, just as the hunchbacked boy came scrambling up to me, holding up a strange wristband in both hands with three glittering, coffin shaped plates.  
“We’re the Horrorangers, these things are called Bloodies, they wanna create massive death, fear and mayhem. We can explain more when we’re not all fighting for our lives!” He said, slapping the device around my wrist and inserting the first of the plates. “Now flip that over and try not to die!” he gave me what I think was supposed to be an encouraging thumbs up before bouncing back to the ragged man’s side.  
I swallowed hard before using my shaking fingers to flick the coffin shaped medal over in it’s slot.  
“Rise UP! Wolfman!” The voice of the device called out as I was wreathed in smoke that hid the blue material glittering into place over my skin, making me feel strong, alive, like a living dynamo as it finally subsided after only a few seconds.  
“Terror under full moon’s light! Wolfman! Blue!” I howled, leaping forward and over the red man’s shoulder, kicking off of it and slamming knees first into one of the dolls, backflipping onto all fours and pouncing on a second, leaping off of it to shoulder slam into a third, leading into a kick and a swipe and a headbutt. I laughed, I felt so alive as i bounced from one position to another, howling out like a wild dog as I skidded to a stop next to the other three heroes  
“Someone’s excited.” The red ranger turned to me and chuckled, placing one hand on his hip and tilting his head with a potent british sass that matched his thick accent. “I can see your tail wagging.” He snickered before we turned back to the fight, the four blurs of color cutting the grunts to ribbons.  
“Oh go be snobby somewhere else, your majesty.” I shot back, tumbling between the legs of one of the dolls just long enough to kick it hard enough in the groin to send it flying into the air. “I’m doin’ this shit the American way! Kickin ass and takin names!” I snarled as I batted on doll’s head clean off it’s shoulders.  
“If I remember the American way correctly as a history student, it would be letting the Russians do most of the work before swooping in about 3 years too late.” The big man in green teased as he played whack a mole with a few of the dolls.  
“Boys...boys...you…” The yellow girl with the glimmering golden claws cleared her throat and took a second shot at what she was trying to say. “Boys are all pretty…” She laughed to herself. I sighed, rolling my shoulders and leaping back as the few remaining stranglers retreated into the trees.  
“This all their “death and mayhem?” I said, turning to my impromptu comrades just quick enough to see they were all jumping back, though i only had time to realize it for a second before a bullet the size of a golf ball slammed into my cheek with enough force that I knew it should’ve blow my head clean off my shoulders and turned it into a fine red paste, though thanks to the seemingly magic helmet it only sent me flipping head over heels into the dirt.  
“No, I would assume that he is though.” The red ranger pointed from the hip, his sword slung over his shoulder in the opposite hand. I pulled my head up as soon as my eyes stopped spinning like formula-1 tires and quickly scrambled back to all fours, snarling in a very animal like way that I wasn’t expecting.  
The...thing that came out of the woods was an 8 foot tall werewolf with thick brown fur and yellowing teeth showing from his drooling muzzle. That would’ve been strange enough on its own without the bandoliers hanging in an X shape across his chest being fed into two guns half as tall as he was that he had instead of hands. His lower half dressed in green camo pants and combat boots with a dome shaped helmet flattening out his ears and laying unclipped at a strange angle.  
“Alright, saving private fido, just walk away and we might not have to-woah!” The red ranger was cut off by the hail of sparking gunfire that left all three of us scrambling for cover, leaving me with my back pressed to the cold side of a rock that from the sounds of it and the look of the massive cloud of earthen dust that was coming from the front side, wouldn’t actually be cover for very much longer.  
I suddenly remembered the other two plates that I had been given by the hunchback and took the one already inside of the strap out, placing the second one in and flipping it over.  
“Chiller! WolfBuster!” The voice shouted as a sudden plume of black smoke made a black and navy pistol in the shape of a wolf’s head, with piercing green eyes appear in my hand.  
“Oh hell yes!” I shouted, peaking past one side of the rapidly disappearing rock and loosing three shots through the dust, just hoping to catch him off guard. One of the shots glanced off the belts of bullets but the other two caught him square in the chest, sending him skidding back as I leaped up and off the rock, slamming my knees into his shoulders and opening up on his face with the handgun, blue bolts of energy assaulting his muzzle, at least five of them making their target before he threw his shoulders up and sent me flying into the branches above.  
I slammed down just in time to see my three allies charge from their hiding places, green slamming into the small of his back, sending him flying forward the other two slashing him as he flew. I moved with quick fingers and placed the third plate into the slot, flipping it over in an instant.  
“Bury! WolfVulcan!” I held the gun high and held down the trigger with all my might, a seemingly never ending barrage of bolts turning the wolf into swiss cheese so that the only thing that remained of him when he reached me was a shower of ash. I shook my head side to side and growled.  
“Ick, he’s everywhere…” I shook myself off, patting down my arms and legs. “Ok, so…not to be rude or anything.” I said, turning to the patch clothed figure and his diminutive assistant. “But someone gonna tell me what the actual hell is happening?” I removed the plate, after a few seconds the suit disappeared.   
“I am Gravekeeper, this is my assistant Yegor. Your fellow Horrorangers…” he said, motioning to the other three as their suits also disappeared. “Are Roy, Loris and Seneb. As for why you were chosen, Douglas Talbot. Is because you share the blood of Lawrence Talbot, the famous Wolfman. This monster, Wolf Army was sent here by a group called the Midnight cabal to collect fear and terror in their quest to awaken an ancient god of fear called the Cloaked Nightmare.” he said, completely seriously, I assume, his face hidden behind the inhuman mass he must have thought was his hair. I waited about 30 seconds for the punchline.  
“Are you serious?!..” I said, gaping at him, looking around to the other’s for a smirk or a chuckle until I turned back to Gravekeeper and nearly choked. “Holy shit…” I coughed and looked back to Gravekeeper. “Actual goddamn monsters and dark gods...and I’m a damn werewolf...oh shit..” I placed my back against a tree sliding down onto the ground.  
Just at that moment a shot whizzed just over my head, sending splinters into the air. I stood and saw my dad at the head of an angry mob all holding guns and torches and marching toward us.  
“Dad!” I said, turning to him as the others narrowed their gazes, ready to fight or run at a moment’s notice. I was given a heartbreaking answer to my call when he fired off another shot, this time only barely missing my side.  
“Get out, you freak! Go! Get out!” he said, firing his gun in the air. Loris grabbed me and held me close to his cold chest as we booked it out into the desert, my entire mind gripped with heart sinking shock at the face of my own father shooting at me like an invasive animal, focused on him as we disappeared into a cloud of dust.

\---  
Deep within the caverns of the Midnight Cabal, the monstrous being who had been the gun toting werewolf’s master is snarling and rolling over the dusty floor in a rage, mouth foaming with shiny white and yellow teeth as he snapped and roared at anything moving in his sight, his mind taken over completely with rage.  
“Well, that went about as well as could be expected.” Chiller Thriller leaned on his cane, talking to the Gothic Witch to one side she placed a dainty finger against the cheek of her porcelain face.   
“I’m not sure what could have been expected from someone called the ‘Mad Monster’ after all…” She shrugged and then sighed to herself after a moment of thought. “This mean only one thing you realize. The last of the five of us to get their turn…” She swallowed hard as a giddy laughter echoed the grave cold chambers of the caves.


End file.
